Features - Knowledge Management : Can it Exist in a Law Office? Part 1

Nina Platt is a Librarian
at the Minnesota Office of the Attorney General. She also worked as Manager
of Technical Services at the Dorsey & Whitney Law Firm in Minneapolis.
To date, she has spent 14 years in law libraries. Nina also compiled and
maintains the Piper State
Court Directory, a directory of state appellate court decisions on the
Web.

(Archived January 1, 1998)

I attended Online World this fall where "knowledge management" and
"intranets" were the buzzwords. Session after session one speaker
after another described their involvement in knowledge management and intranet
development. As I sat in the meetings I couldn't help but wonder how knowledge
management could be applied in law offices, how some librarians are already
involved in the management of knowledge, and what needs to happen for knowledge
management to occur.

What is knowledge management?

Upon returning from the conference, I was eager to solidify my understanding
of knowledge management and to learn how such a concept could be (or is being)
implemented in law offices. I quickly found out that there is no easy
definition.

A recent article in Library Journal defines it as "accessing,
evaluating, managing, organizing, filtering, and distributing information in a
manner that is useful to end users . knowledge management involves
blending a company's internal and external information and turning it into
actionable knowledge via a technology platform"1.
Another article, this time in Information Week, quotes Gordon Petrash of Dow
Chemical Co. who says it is "getting the right knowledge to the right
people at the right time"2.

Other writers on the subject define it more broadly. Verna Allee in The
Knowledge Evolution: Expanding Organizational Intelligence states "Real
knowledge management is much more than managing the flow of information. It
means nothing less than setting knowledge free to find its own paths. It means
fueling the creative fire of self-questioning in organizations. This means
thinking less about knowledge management and more about knowledge partnering.3" Her book describes how the organizational
structure of a business can create a collaborative environment where knowledge
is shared.

After listening to the speakers, reading several articles and browsing
through a few books, I began to understand knowledge management as the creation
of systems or processes in a learning environment that allow all employees to
have access to the information resources they need to develop the knowledge
necessary to do their jobs. Those resources may be data that has been collected
and stored in a database or knowledge that a co-worker or manager have developed
and stored in memory. The vital component in knowledge management is that the
resources are shared.

This definition is based on the following bits of knowledge I picked up
while reading:

Knowledge itself cannot be managed. Only the processes or systems
through which we share knowledge can be managed.

A collaborative learning environment that promotes and rewards
sharing of resources must exist in order for knowledge management to
succeed.

Despite these two complex requirements, knowledge management is a thriving
concept eing implemented in businesses throughout the world. Many companies are
rushing to purchase and implement a variety of knowledge management tools
(databases, groupware, web technologies, etc.) in an effort to reap the benefits
of knowledge management.

A concept by any other name

Knowledge management, it is reported, had it's start in the Big Six
Consulting firms and is now being embraced by other industries because of "the
explosive growth of information resources such as the Internet, and the
accelerating pace of technological change"4
that is leaving workers "both overwhelmed by information and fearful that
they're missing important details"5.

It would seem that those of us in law offices must have been overwhelmed
years ago since law librarians have been engaged in knowledge management for
years. Examples of the work we have been doing are many. On the traditional end,
law librarians have been working within their organizations to develop what the
MBA types are now calling Best Practices collections. We have called them Brief
Banks, Research Memo Collections, Attorney Work Product Systems, Pleadings/Forms
Banks, etc.

Other examples that are less traditional include:

Conflict
management

Depending on the size of the firm, conflict management
can be an integral part of the services the library provides. In smaller
firms, the librarian may be called upon to run conflict checks and
maintain a database of clients detailing corporate relationships
between parents, subsidiaries, spin-offs, etc. In larger firms, a
Conflict Management department will process these same checks. Some of
the larger firms have this department reporting to the director of the
library. Still some have the Conflict group as its own entity but
have hired a librarian to manage the group. Becky Brass, a veteran
librarian in special libraries, is the manager of the Conflict
Management group at Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis. Her
responsibilities include the management of a staff who maintains a
conflicts database, runs searches through on-line services for
corporate relationships, etc.

Records management

Some law librarians have shunned the possibility of
adding this responsibility to the services provided by their libraries
because they think others view it as a thankless job. Others have viewed
it as their responsibility to manage information from both
external and internal sources. Those who work with records management
are responsible for the creation and maintenance of a records management
database that allows them to track documents and data from cases,
transactions, etc.

Marketing
information management

Increasingly, law librarians are taking on the role of tracking
and maintaining marketing information For Ann Roberts, Director of Client
and Information Services at McQuire Woods Battle & Boothe, it means
managing the entire marketing process. Roberts has led the office in
technological innovations through her efforts to make information available
via the firm s intranet. In addition to the legal information resources
available through the intranet, Roberts has also made the intranet a resource
for marketing information. Information available on the intranet include
responses to RFPs, policies, forms and other documents needed by attorneys
and staff in a marketing effort. It also includes access to an Expert s
list, Calendar of Events, Firm Newsletters, links to client sites, links to
marketing articles, and a membership list (list of memberships held by
attorneys in the firm). In other firms, managing the information needed for
the marketing process may also include creation of databases to track work
referred in and out, tracking client contacts and the client relationship,
maintaining competitive intelligence, tracking news about existing clients
and/or prospective clients, etc. The information that could be maintained to
support the marketing process seems endless. Moreover, it is not only
necessary that this type of information be maintained--the right people have
to be able to have access to it.

Document
management

While the document management process seems like a
secretarial responsibility, setting up and maintaining such a system
requires many of the skills possessed by librarians. With document
management, we are making it easier to save and retrieve work in
progress. The manager of a system like DOCS Open (one of the
document management systems used by many law offices today) must be
familiar with database management and full-text retrieval. Part of
setting up the system is working with various parts of the organization
to determine how they want to access the documents they are
creating. A system like this (properly set up) allows departments, teams
and individuals to maintain different information about a document
depending on the type of document, the client and matter numbers, etc.
Library Director, Deb Muntean of Briggs and Morgan in St. Paul
Minnesota, took on the responsibility of implementing an upgrade of DOCS
Open when the MIS director left at the onset of the project.

Contact management
and other databases

Prior to the use of office-wide contact managers that
are being implemented in many offices, librarians in those same firms
were developing databases that tracked contact information (and other
bits of data) for expert witnesses, litigation support services, judges
biographies, CLE conferences, etc. All of these databases have
one thing in common--they provide lawyers and staff with information
that makes their jobs easier.

Case management

New to most law office, case management (also called
practice management by some vendors) seems as difficult to define as
knowledge management depending on who is defining the concept. At the
Minnesota Attorney General's Office, where we are currently working on
the selection of case management software and implementation of
the same within the next year, we are looking for a system that will
provide attorneys and staff with information on the cases on which they
are working. The case management system will be integrated with our time
and billing and calendar systems and will provide contact
management, matter management, transaction management, docketing, access
to documents generated, time and billing reports, and many other
benefits.

Build it and they will come?

When I was first asked to participate in the case management project, I had
a hard time seeing what skills I could bring to it. Since then, I discovered
that I had a lot to contribute. Besides the usual skill of gathering information
on case management and its vendors, I also contributed project management and
database development skills. The other librarians described in the above
examples are also using both traditional and non-traditional skills to manage
information produced both internally and externally. But does this make us
knowledge managers? Well, yes and no.

Yes, we are doing knowledge management work if we are working to create
systems or processes that are intended to assist attorneys and staff in the
creation or transfer of knowledge from one entity to another. No, we are not, if
those systems are not being used or if the systems exist but the people who need
the information do not have access.

Any of you who have worked on the creation of a Brief Bank or Attorney Work
Product System have experienced the challenges that come about as the result of
trying to manage knowledge. Thomas Davenport echoes what we know in his "Ten
Principles of Knowledge Management."

While the creation and maintenance of a knowledge management system is an
expensive endeavor, the advantages it gives by creating more knowledgeable
attorneys and staff who in turn are able to provide better service to clients
makes it worth developing. Because knowledge is intangible and therefore hard to
measure, many managing committees of law offices will not allow the expenditures
necessary to be successful.

Besides the failure that can happen because the necessary resources are not
available, many Brief Banks, Work Product systems, etc. are not successful
because the environment does not allow it. If knowledge is seen as power and
sharing knowledge is not placed high among skills that all attorneys and staff
must possess, it is very likely that the implementation of such a system will
fail. A learning environment where knowledge is not a commodity but instead a
shared resource is required for success.

Hmmm that seems to pound the last nail in the coffin of knowledge
management in law offices. After all, law is an adversarial sport (I mean
profession). One question (that I don't have the answer to at this time) must be
answered before we can move ahead in knowledge management. "How can we
create a collaborative learning environment in a law office?" The two,
collaboration and the practice of law, seem mutually exclusive. The "Big
Six" firms answer to this challenge is to tie the success of such a system
to compensation. Collaboration and sharing is a requirement of each employee's
job and performance evaluations include a review of how well the employee is
doing in participating in the knowledge management process. Can that begin to
happen in law offices?

Let's pretend we've solved the problem

So, we have a collaborative learning environment, what's next? What does a
knowledge management system look like in a law office? As is seen in many
implementations it is probably web based. An intranet exists that provides
access to the various systems that have been put in place to make the transfer
of knowledge flow easily. Through the intranet, attorneys and staff (with
security in place so only those who have a need to see the information) have
access to:

Best Practices - An attorney work product system that includes briefs,
research memos, pleadings, transactional documents, forms, etc.

Resumes - A system where resumes for attorneys and staff are maintained
that allow others to identify expertise that would otherwise not be known.
It could also be used to track memberships held by individuals attorneys and
any other information that may be useful to know.

Variety of systems depending on need - Expert witness database,
litigation support services directory, judges biographies, and many other
databases that are created and maintained in house or purchased from vendors
and accessed via the Internet.

Conflict and records management information

The list of what could be included in such a system will depend on the law
office's needs and the policies in the office that permit the exchange of
information. Looking at this short list, it is evident that the benefits of such
a system are many. Now if we could only figure out how to share

More on knowledge management

This article barely touches on what knowledge management is and how it is
being used. To learn more visit the following sites:

The second part
of this article will focus on the skills needed for knowledge management,
how to create a collaborative learning environment and more specific
examples of knowledge management efforts in law firms.